From the Conference’s Labour Day message “Northern Development: At What Cost?”, a pastoral statement on the development of energy resources and its impact on Native Peoples:
[W]hat we see emerging in the Canadian North are forms of exploitation which we often assume happen only Third World countries: a serious abuse of […]
From a Statement by the Social Action Department, Liberation in a Christian Perspective:
In Canada as many as one quarter of the citizens, including most Indians, Metis and Eskimos, are still trapped within an imprisoning network of circumstances and constraints.
In response by the Conference to the Government of Canada Statement on Indian Policy, the Bishops pledged support and cooperation for Native land claims and other rights and invited the Government to negotiate with Indigenous Peoples and to grant them financial resources to prepare their cases.
Opening of Ste-Marie among the Hurons, the 17th-century Jesuit mission to the Hurons in Midland, Ontario. Its restoration was a collaborative undertaking by the Upper Canadian Province of the Jesuits and the Government of Ontario.
From “A Letter from the Assembly of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Canada on the Occasion of the One Hundredth Year of Confederation”:
The Problem of Minorities
It is now recognized that the Indians and Eskimos have often had to endure, and sometimes still endure, the effect of prejudice, ignorance, indifference, […]
The Board of the Conference, meeting in Rome, “granted, for this year, an amount of $3,000 [nearly $25,000 in 2018 dollars] to the St. John Bosco Indian-Metis Cultural Centre [of Winnipeg]. This institution, founded in the fall of 1963, aims at promoting the social, economic and spiritual progress of the […]
The Conference consistently advocated for the rights of Catholic Native Canadians to health care in Catholic hospitals and education in Catholic schools.
The Canadian Catholic Conference [the name was changed to Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) in 1977] had established a Permanent/Standing Committee on Indian Affairs/Comité des Affaires indiennes (later named Committee on Indian and Eskimo Affairs).
Extract from the minutes of the Quinquennial Plenary Meeting of the Canadian Hierarchy:
The Government proposes to erect hospitals to which Catholic Indians will be compelled to go when in need of treatment – on the ground that they are the wards of the Government, which alone determines their lot. The […]